


Picking Up Stitches

by fuzzballsheltiepants



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: AFTG Winter Exchange, And a Namesake Dog, Asexual Character, Cats, Fluff, Knitting, M/M, New Neighbors, POV Alternating, POV Outsider, Seriously awkward dinner, pro exy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21774505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants
Summary: Neil & Andrew are finally on the same team, finally moving in together, into a quiet neighborhood recommended by their agent.  Neil can't quite believe it's real, but with the help of a new neighbor - who's also a secret fan - he starts to settle into his new home.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 36
Kudos: 530
Collections: AFTG Exchange Winter 2019





	Picking Up Stitches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [priorwalter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/priorwalter/gifts).



> Written for @beetlejeuse on Tumblr for the AFTG Winter Exchange. You asked for people reacting to Andrew and Neil being Andrew and Neil, and about playing pro Exy. I kind of cheated a bit on the latter, but I hope you enjoy it anyway! (If I'm being honest this fic took over completely and just refused to be written any other way.)
> 
> Thank you as always to @tntwme for the beta, to @allforthebee for hashing out ideas, and to @foxsoulcourt for cheerleading (and being such a firm supporter of the women in the fic!).

“Oh. My. God.”

Leslie felt her jaw go slack and her foot slip off the gas. She had to be seeing things. Had to be. There was just no way on God’s green earth….

A mailbox jumped in front of her car and she managed to twitch the steering wheel just in time to miss it. Her cheeks caught fire when she glanced in the rear view mirror and saw him watching her car as it careened down the road. Of course. Of course his first impression of her would be her nearly murdering his mailbox.

She pulled into her garage; at least he wouldn’t be able to identify her, she thought, closing the door before escaping from her car. Jossie greeted her as she burst into the house, his little nails scrabbling on the floor. His wiry coat was standing on end, and he gave a little woo before bounding past her to growl at the garage. He must’ve thought there was some sort of threat. Well, one that wasn’t Leslie; she was always her own worst enemy.

“Ma! Ma?”

“I’m in here,” her mom’s voice wavered from down in the living room. “Watching my soaps.”

Leslie half-jogged across the house, Jossie bouncing alongside. She gawked for a second at the mostly naked man on the screen before realizing—it’s Saturday. No soaps on Saturday, but evidently her mom had found something of interest lurking in the pay cable. Shaking her head she turned to her mother, who was bent over her knitting. “Guess who just moved into the Braxton’s old house.”

Her mother paused and peered up at her. “I hope it’s not that Tom Hanks.”

“Doesn’t he live in LA?”

“Well you said that he just moved in,” her mother said, waving a knitting needle at her.

Leslie shook her head, trying to clear it. “It’s not Tom Hanks.”

“Good. I don’t like that Tom Hanks.”

Blinking did not clarify her mother’s issue with the man who may, in fact, be the least objectionable person in the world at that moment; she let it slide in favor of sharing her news. “Neil Josten. Neil Josten bought the Braxton’s house, can you believe it?”

“You mean that sports man you have a crush on?”

“I don’t have a crush.”

“You named your dog after him.”

Jossie was looking between them with a perplexed expression on his scruffy little face. Leslie reached down to ruffle his coat into even greater disarray. “Yeah, because they’re both little and fast and pick a fight every chance they get.”

Her mother knitted for a moment, rocking gently in her chair, careful not to pinch Jossie’s little feet under the rockers. “Is he married?”

“Ma.”

“I’m just asking.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” She could hear the familiar note of exasperation in her voice. Twenty years, and her mother still never stopped.

“It’s a normal question, Les.”

Leslie huffed. “Not when you ask it, it’s not.”

The movie’s music swelled in the background; her mother’s needles clicked gently; Jossie leaned up against her shins. She settled on the couch opposite her mother, snagging her own knitting bag off the floor and pulling out her latest project, a pair of mittens in a selbu pattern. It was the same as every weekend afternoon, because for Leslie, nothing ever changed. But everything had changed.

She was, officially, neighbors with Neil-freaking-Josten, and she would befriend him whether he wanted it or not.

* * *

Neil’s feet hit the pavement in a steady rhythm; he pulled in lungfuls of flower-scented air as he wound through the streets. Birdsong filled a sky stained pink by the sunrise. It felt like a very peculiar sort of dream, highly specific but also completely impossible. Yet he was pretty sure it was real.

The neighborhood stirred, blinking sleepy eyes and stretching. Lights flickered on in kitchens, shadows moved behind closed blinds. A cat crouched underneath a tree, watching him pass. Somewhere along the line he had been dropped into some suburbian sitcom, and he was just waiting for the laugh track to start.

He turned back onto his street, and a smile pulled at his lips. Andrew would be waiting for him, still snuggled under the covers in their bed. Or maybe in the kitchen with a cup of fresh coffee, if the idiot kittens had pounced on him and woken him up. Neil slowed to a walk to catch his breath, trying to decide which was the better scenario. Then marvelling at the fact that both were possible at all.

A growl sounded from his right, and he froze instinctively before relaxing; the growl should’ve been ominous, except it was pitched about 3 octaves too high to be particularly effective. He peered around the bushes to see a dog roughly the size of a loaf of bread, made bigger by the giant frizz of wiry white hair, straining against the leash holding him back. The other end of the leash was held by a woman maybe a decade older than Neil, her face roughly the color of a fire engine as she looked everywhere but up.

“Morning,” Neil said, after an awkward pause broken only by the kazoo-like noise from the dog. At the sound of his voice, the growling stopped and the little tail started wagging. Neil thought wryly that Dan would be proud of him for his attempt at being neighborly.

The woman muttered something too quiet to be heard, but he suspected it was, “Hi.” After a second he realized why she looked vaguely familiar: he had seen her through the windshield of her car when she had nearly taken out his mailbox the previous weekend. That explained the embarrassment, at least.

“What’s his name?” he asked, gesturing to the dog, who now appeared as desperate to make friends as he had been to commit murder a moment before.

The woman’s mouth opened, then closed silently. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Jossie.”

“Cute.” He crouched down and held out his hand. Jossie walked forward stiffly, tail rigid and twitching just a tiny bit, as if against his will, while he sniff-inspected Neil thoroughly. Evidently he passed because the little thing bounced up and licked him in the nose. Not on; in: he felt tongue up his left nostril.

“Oh my God, Jossie,” the woman said, horror in her voice as she tugged the dog away. “I’m so sorry.”

Neil stood, rubbing at his nose. “It’s fine.”

The woman stared at him for a moment while he contemplated potential ways to disinfect the inside of his nose. Bleach seemed like a poor idea; he wasn’t sure rubbing alcohol was much better. He was debating the finer points of vodka vs. just plain soap and water when she seemed to come to a decision and stuck out her hand. “Leslie. Leslie Wilson.”

He hesitated for a second before shaking her hand. “Neil.”

Her embarrassed blush deepened. “Nice to meet you...Neil. Sorry about my heathen dog.”

The heretic in question was gazing up at him, tongue lolling out of his mouth in a doggie grin; Neil couldn’t help but return the smile. “Like recognizes like I guess.” There was another awkward pause, then, “See you around, I guess.”

“Yeah, see you around,” Leslie echoed. She looked vaguely like someone had punched her in the head, and he wondered, as he walked the hundred yards back to his house— _his house_ —if she was okay. But Andrew was sitting at the kitchen counter, a mug of coffee between his hands and the kittens skittering about chasing each other, and he forgot all about the neighbor and her scruffy dog as he bent down for his good-morning kiss.

* * *

It only took Leslie two and a half weeks to start to get over seeing Neil Josten every morning. Evidently he enjoyed sunrise runs, because Jossie got her up at the ass-crack of dawn every freaking day and every freaking day Neil was there. Sometimes she caught a glimpse of his back as he headed in the opposite direction; sometimes they passed each other out on the streets, with a nod and a little wave; and sometimes, like that first time, they met just as Leslie and Jossie were setting out. Those were her favorite days, because he inevitably stopped and said hi to his namesake and Jossie would turn himself inside out with joy.

“I’m going to invite him over for dinner,” she announced to her mother, the first day she managed to have a conversation with him without feeling like her face was sitting in a woodstove.

Her mother tried, and failed, to stifle her triumphant look. “That sounds nice.”

“Him and his partner.” Leslie laughed to herself at the way her mother’s face fell. Neil had mentioned something about his partner once; she still didn’t even know their name, but there had been a look of such fondness on his face that she was sure they were a lovely person. And Neil deserved that, after all he had been through.

But when she went to ask him the next morning, the question stuck in her throat. He fell in with her and Jossie as they meandered down the street in the direction of his house, pausing so Jossie could sniff every mailbox, every flower, every bush along the way. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable. No; it was the very lack of tension that made it somehow impossible. They got to his house and he nodded good-bye before jogging up the drive, his eyes alight from the rising sun.

Neil went the opposite direction the next day, raising a hand in greeting as he ran past. Jossie bounced after him with tiny growls, hitting the end of his leash and ricocheting back towards Leslie. And the morning after that was a downpour, and she kept Jossie’s walk short. And then somehow it didn’t seem like such a good idea after all.

She didn’t really know why. Maybe it was that she didn’t want to ruin the easy, almost anonymous camaraderie of their mornings. Maybe it was that she liked it being a bit of a secret, as news spread around the neighborhood of the celebrity among them. She found herself biting back a smile as the members of her knitting club murmured, wondering about the reclusive star, so mouthy to the press and so quiet during the off-season. She listened to their speculation about his love life, his interests, what he was really like, and she thought about what she could tell them. That he liked dogs and tiger lilies; that he went jogging even in the rain, tilting his head back to let the drops wash the sweat off his face; that when he spoke of his mysterious partner his whole face came alive.

But she didn’t. She kept quiet, and knitted away at the scarf she was working on to match the gloves, and thanked her dog for being such a goddamn early riser.

* * *

The knock at the door startled the cats out of their quiet doze. It did not startle Andrew; he dropped his book in his lap on purpose, and waited, listening for another knock. The neighborhood had been quiet so far, as quiet as their agent had promised it would be. A good place for him to lay low while he recovered from the high ankle sprain that he had gotten lunging to stop a goal in the World Cup.

Stupid sport.

The knock sounded again, and he got to his feet and gimped over to the door. The kittens galumphed ahead of him, sounding like a herd of rhinos instead of approximately sixteen pounds of feline, total. They weren’t really even kittens; the gray one was just under a year, and the splotchy one was seven months. More teenagers than kittens, no matter what Neil insisted on calling them.

Scooping them both under one arm, he opened the door to reveal a woman scarcely taller than himself, gray-haired and round and carrying a covered dish. She reminded him of Bee, though he couldn’t have said why; she looked nothing like her, but there was something in the way she looked at him…

“Peach cobbler,” she said, shoving the pan at him. It smelled delicious; he took it with his free hand, then almost dropped it as the gray cat made a bid for freedom. The woman caught the cat mid-air and held him up to face her. “Where do you think you’re going, young man?” she asked sternly.

The cat just blinked owlishly in answer. She tucked him under her arm and studied Andrew for a moment. “My daughter’s a huge fan of yours. She’s been meaning to ask you to dinner, I don’t know why she hasn’t. Your partner should come too.”

Andrew suspected his expression mirrored the cat’s. He didn’t reply; she didn’t seem to need him to. “We’ll make spaghetti. Everyone likes spaghetti. Saturday. Don’t bring the cats, I don’t think they’ll like the dog very much.”

With that, she placed the gray cat on the floor, then closed the door, careful to avoid Andrew’s feet and the cat’s tail. He stared at the closed door until the little one’s squirming pulled him from his reverie; as soon as she was all four paws on the floor she pounced on her new brother, and Andrew huffed a laugh as they rolled down the hallway.

He was on his second helping of cobbler when Neil got home from the grocery store half an hour later. “Hey, Sir,” Neil said, scooping up the gray beast before he could climb into the grocery bags and smash the eggs. He caught sight of the dish on the counter, and his forehead crinkled. “Did you bake?”

“Our elderly neighbor did.” He relayed the conversation while they put away the groceries, Neil laughing throughout.

“Aww, you have a fan! Her daughter must be Leslie,” Neil said when he was finished. “The woman with the dog? I’ll ask her but I don’t know who else it would be. Explains why she seemed so awkward at first, I guess.”

Andrew nudged him with his elbow, receiving a nudge in return. “You’re enough to explain that, you’re basically a cryptid.”

“You’re the antisocial one.”

“I’m antisocial like a human who’s antisocial. You’re social like a cryptid who’s doing a research project.”

Neil hummed and leaned in. “I’m your cryptid,” he said against Andrew’s lips, and the rest of the cobbler was forgotten.

* * *

The clock was ticking steadily on, neither faster nor slower no matter what Leslie did with her hands. She’d given up working on her scarf after the seventh dropped stitch; the meatballs were simmering away in their sauce, the water pre-heated, the salad made, the asparagus seasoned and ready to go in the oven. There was nothing left to do other than flip unseeing through a book, something to do with owls that was apparently supposed to be funny but right now was just an endless march of black lines on a white page.

Her mother was knitting away at a blanket for some yet-to-be-born kid, pretending Leslie was not silently being turned to coal by anticipation. As if this wasn’t her fault to begin with. As if she hadn’t just marched right on up to Neil, foisted dessert upon him, and ordered him to come to dinner. Not that she had admitted to that, but Leslie knew her mother. “What if they don’t come?” she asked, breaking the silence.

“Then we’ll have leftovers.”

It was such a practical answer, such a her-mother answer, that Leslie couldn’t help but huff a laugh. And then there was a knock on the door and Jossie went absolutely bonkers barking, spinning his little wheels fruitlessly against the floor before he finally got purchase and shot down the hallway in a clatter of toenails.

She followed after, scooping up the hysterical dog and wrenching open the door. Jossie’s noisemaker shut off the second he recognized Neil, and she was dimly aware of his little tail brushing her ribcage, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Nothing mattered, because Neil was standing there, and next to him, short and square and stolid, was his partner. And she knew his partner. The whole world did, in fact; everybody just thought—Leslie had thought—that they were anything but friendly.

Because his partner was Andrew Minyard.

There were whole blogs devoted to the Minyard-Josten rivalry, to Neil’s tweets mocking Andrew and Andrew’s deadpan responses. The announcement that Neil would be joining Andrew’s team had led to weeks of speculation and discussion on ESPN and across the internet. There was video of them yelling at each other on the court at the World Cup, of Andrew hooking his fingers in Neil’s facemask and slamming him into the wall during warmups, of Neil pointing at Andrew and saying something that lip readers had debated for days about but that was generally believed to be “Fuck you.”

And maybe it was...but maybe in a totally different context.

Neil was talking, introducing Andrew, and Leslie shifted Jossie into her other arm to extend her hand. Andrew didn’t take it; he was studying her, face impassive but something too sharp and knowing in his eyes. She found herself wanting to apologize, then bristling against that impulse. And he saw it all.

Somehow her voice still worked, and she managed to invite them in. Jossie squirmed in her arms and she tightened her hold on him until the door closed behind Andrew. The second she loosed her squeeze, Jossie vaulted out of her arms. Neil caught him in mid-air, laughing as he fended off the resultant licking attempts.

Leslie’s mom appeared then, and she smiled and nodded—at Andrew, for some reason. Even more confusing, he nodded back. Neil seemed unsurprised, yet there was no recognition in his face as he shook her mother’s hand. “I’m Neil,” he said, with a practiced smile. “And you already met Andrew.”

Leslie’s mom blinked at him, then gave a nervous glance at Andrew. There was something new in his eyes, Leslie noticed; an amused gleam, as if he’d had a secret question answered. “Marjorie Wilson,” she finally said. “Thank you for coming.”

They all followed her down the hall, Leslie barely restraining herself from grabbing her mother and demanding clarification. There seemed only one possibility as to what happened, and her mother’s obvious embarrassment meant she had said _something_ , something horrible or wrong...to Andrew. For that must have been what happened: she had mistaken Andrew for Neil and—what?

But Neil was at her back, Andrew a step behind, and Leslie had no idea what to do.

Politeness alone got her through the next five minutes. She busied herself getting drinks while her mother put the finishing touches on the meal. And Jossie busied himself tearing around the house grabbing toys to show off and then refusing to let anyone touch them. By the time they sat down Jossie had worked his way to the elephant that was as big as he was. He waved it at Andrew, who seemed to ignore him but as Leslie carried over the giant bowl of spaghetti she noticed one hand reaching down to scratch the scruffy little rump.

Panic almost seized her again when they were sitting down, plates heaped with food. What the hell did you say to professional athletes, two of the best in the world, when you were a thirty-nine-year-old accountant living with your mother, who had maybe—almost definitely—said something embarrassing at some point?

Start ordinary, she told herself, and she asked them something utterly bland about the neighborhood. Neil answered in the same vein, and for a few minutes it seemed like they might get through the dinner with all the banal awkwardness of utter strangers forced into a room together. But then—

“How did you two meet?” her mother asked, the picture of innocence but Leslie was not fooled.

Andrew’s mouth twitched, but it was Neil who answered, so briefly as to be almost curt, “College.”

Her mom nodded sagely. “That’s where I met Leslie’s dad. He was an utter bastard, though, so you two are probably better off.”

Neil barked a laugh, and Jossie leaped up from where he had been dozing on his elephant to bark back. “Some would say the same about me.”

“Everyone would say the same about you,” Andrew interjected, almost the first thing he’d said. But there was—not a smile, not really, but the impression of a smile playing about his mouth and eyes. It changed his face completely, and Leslie suddenly thought she might understand why Neil got dreamy-eyed every time he mentioned his partner.

And there it was, that same look, belying the knife-sharp grin. “You seem to like it.”

“Never said I didn’t.”

“I’ve said this to Leslie, you know,” her mom said. “Best to find someone with a bit of the devil in them. Keeps it interesting.”

“It’s why I picked Jossie,” Leslie said, with a smile of her own at the little mass of fur who was now laying draped across Neil’s feet. “He stole my glove when I went to the shelter. I just meant to make a donation, but.”

Her mom’s look was reproving. “You can’t compare romance to a dog, Leslie.”

“True,” Leslie said, before she could stop herself. “I actually wanted a dog.”

This time Andrew laughed too. It was a quiet thing, almost swallowed up by Neil’s audible smile, and Leslie felt kind of like she was intruding until she saw the little crinkles on the sides of Andrew’s eyes, the glimmer of warmth that softened them. Then she couldn’t help but join in, and when they had finally caught their breath the awkwardness was gone.

“How’d he get his name, anyway?” Neil asked, twirling his fork in his spaghetti. It all slid off when he lifted it to his mouth, splattering tiny droplets of sauce everywhere, and that was the only thing that kept Leslie from panicking at the question.

“I named him after my favorite Exy player,” she admitted, feeling her neck, her ears, hell, her whole entire head start to burn.

“Huh? Oh!” Neil glanced at Andrew, a flush rising in his own cheeks as he realized what she meant. “I thought Andrew was your favorite player.”

Okay, now Leslie was certain she had somehow caught fire. That was a thing, right? Spontaneous combustion? She glanced at her mother and was surprised to see her also more than a bit pink. Her mom understood the silent question and gave a tiny, resigned sigh.

“I may have mistaken Andrew for Neil when I brought over the cobbler.”

“You did what now?”

“To be fair, how was I to know two Exy players had moved in?”

“But—” Leslie gestured between the two men. “How could you confuse these two?”

“You said Neil was small! And you know I don’t like to watch, it’s too violent.”

The two men were watching the pair of them like a tennis match, Neil looking a bit dumbfounded, Andrew showing nothing more than the wry humor that seemed to be his main expression. Meanwhile Leslie was trying to wrap her brain around the fact that her mother had just described them as small to their faces. She was going to have to move. Or fake her own death. Both. Something.

“But how come Andrew’s not your favorite?” Neil sounded so lost it cut right through the buzzing in Leslie’s ears. “He’s amazing!”

Leslie liked Andrew; since he joined the local team they had actually had half a shot at making the playoffs, and it was amazing how well he could shut down the goal given the size differential. But she had an itemized list of why Neil was her chosen favorite athlete tucked somewhere in the filing cabinets in her brain. It started with him mouthing off on television as a college freshman and continued up to the backflip he performed off the plexiglass wall to celebrate his medal-winning goal at the World Cup.

Andrew gave another almost-inaudible laugh, and his eyes were sharp as a blade. “Don’t mind him, he still hasn’t gotten used to the fact that half the world wants to get into his pants.”

The sound of Neil choking on his tongue, or maybe a meatball, was drowned out by Leslie’s incredulous snort. “Yeah, no, that is not a factor.”

“Leslie is one of those ace-sexuals,” her mother supplied helpfully.

Neil tried to sit up, but he was still coughing. Andrew whacked him on the back a few times but he didn’t look away from Leslie. She sighed; might as well give herself up now. “You’re my favorite player because when you were a freshman you flipped that huge guy into the wall and knocked him out for two weeks. And then you kept getting beaten all to hell and you just went right on playing. You make everyone around you better even if it’s completely obvious they hate your guts—or at least when everyone else thinks they do,” she tacked on, with a glance at Andrew. “But I’ve never had any interest in what’s in your pants, or anyone else’s. I just always enjoy people who really love what they do. That’s it.”

There was a brief silence, and then Neil looked at Andrew. “I told you ace people have the best taste.”

Leslie and her mother laughed; Andrew elbowed him in the side, and Neil grinned, his eyes so fond and soft it was hard to look at. Even more so when Andrew’s arm moved, just a little, his hand invisible under the table but in the right position to be grasping Neil’s. Andrew wasn’t soft, he wasn’t gentle; not on the court, not in the press, not in Leslie’s dining room, where even his words were like fists. But there was something subtle, almost delicate, in that movement, and Leslie found herself blinking too hard even as she laughed.

Looking back that night when she was tucked into bed, a mug of tea on her nightstand and Jossie snuggled tight against her side, she realized how strange it was how easily conversation flowed with them. Andrew was economical with his words, Neil incisive; but they both were intelligent in a way that had never translated through a television screen. There had been glimpses of it on the early morning walks, the way Neil would mention in passing something he’d read, or point out a bird by name. She didn’t know why it surprised her after the fact.

Maybe it was just her night to be confronted with her own assumptions. After all, her mother had surprised her too. After dinner, she had led Andrew and Neil into the living room and pulled out the baby blanket she’d just finished, a soft tweed-striped one in gray and black and cream. Leslie had been wondering about the color choices, but it made sense when she held it out to Andrew. “For your cats.”

Andrew had taken it into his broad hands with the same delicacy he had betrayed himself with earlier. He had looked at an utter loss as to what to say, but Neil had reached out and run a finger over the precise stitching. “Did you make this?”

Her mother nodded. “It’s not hard.”

“It looks hard,” Neil said, lips twitching up in an unguarded smile.

“Some patterns are,” Leslie explained, pulling out her scarf with its complex black-and-white design. “With those it’s a lot of counting and keeping track. But it’s actually really relaxing. I can teach you, if you want.”

“Huh.” He rubbed a corner of the blanket between his fingers. “Maybe. Yeah, maybe that’s a good idea. The kitties will love it, I’m sure.”

“What are your cat’s names?” Leslie asked. She hadn’t even known they’d had cats. Her mother had been keeping all sorts of things quiet, evidently.

“Gray cat and Splotchy cat,” Andrew said.

“Sir Fat Cat McCatterson and King Fluffkins,” Neil countered.

Andrew made a disgusted noise. “I can’t believe you actually let those assholes vote on this.”

“You love it. We have the weirdest names at the vet’s office, it’s great.”

“Well, I can’t believe you think Gray cat and Splotchy cat are acceptable names for those beautiful cats,” Leslie’s mom scolded.

“He wanted to name them Scopes and Hodges,” Neil explained.

“After...what, the Scopes Monkey Trial?”

Andrew inclined his chin. “And Obergefell v. Hodges.” It took Leslie a moment before she remembered: the Supreme Court case that made gay marriage legal throughout the country.

“Those are good names,” Leslie’s mother said, approving. “You’ll just have to get more cats.”

When they finally left, loaded down with mixed-berry shortcake and the blanket and a book Andrew had mentioned wanting to read, they had paused in the doorway. “Thank you, Leslie, Marjorie,” Neil said. There was something else there, something hidden behind the words, and Leslie hoped she’d have a chance to parse it out.

Andrew just nodded at them both. “You’ll have to come back,” Leslie’s mom said. “I like you. You’re nothing like that Tom Hanks.”

That had earned her a raised eyebrow and what might have been a smile, and then the two of them left, disappearing into the darkness beyond the porch lights.

* * *

The night was brisk, clean; a breeze ran cool fingers through Neil’s hair, and he leaned into the invisible touch. They walked slowly in deference to Andrew’s ankle, but Neil didn’t mind. Crickets sang, a tiny chorus filling the air around them, joined here and there by the frogs that lived in the pond at the bottom of the hill.

“That was kind of fun.” Neil kept his voice quiet, but it still sounded strange against the song of the night. “They’re nice people.”

Andrew bumped his arm but didn’t say anything, which was a positive judgement if Neil had ever seen one. He couldn’t resist; he tucked the blanket and the book under his arm and slipped his free hand into Andrew’s. Andrew squeezed once, pressing for a brief second against his side.

It felt strange, touching like this where people might see; it felt right. Neither of them had ever wanted to make some grand statement, set themselves up as some sort of example. But this was _right,_ in a bone-deep way that defied words, that defied judgement, and Neil leaned in to brush his lips against Andrew’s temple.

They turned up the driveway, their hands full of gifts and each other. There was a light in the living room, warm and welcoming and familiar; two cat silhouettes appeared in the window, waiting. Watching them come home.

**Author's Note:**

> I really had a ton of fun writing this even if I completely lost control over it. My original plans were...very different, but I'm glad I let the characters dictate. I hope you all enjoyed it! Comments and kudos give me life, and if you ever want to yell at/near/with me come visit me [ on Tumblr](http://fuzzballsheltiepants.tumblr.com)


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